Category

Educational

New course for fall 2018: On-Ramp to Data Science for Chemical Engineers

By | Educational, General Interest, Happenings, News

Description: Engineers are encountering and generating a ever-growing body of data and recognizing the utility of applying data science (DataSci) approaches to extract knowledge from that data. A common barrier to learning DataSci is the stack of prerequisite courses that cannot fit into the typical engineering student schedule. This class will remove this barrier by, in one semester, covering essential foundational concepts that are not part of many engineering disciplines’ core curricula. These include: good programming practices, data structures, linear algebra, numerical methods, algorithms, probability, and statistics. The class’s focus will be on how these topics relate to data science and to provide context for further self-study.

Eligibility: College of Engineering students, pending instructor approval.

More information: http://myumi.ch/LzqPq

Instructor: Heather Mayes, Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering, hbmayes@umich.edu.

Interdisciplinary Committee on Organizational Studies (ICOS) Big Data Summer Camp, May 14-18

By | Data, Educational, General Interest, Happenings, News
Social and organizational life are increasingly conducted online through electronic media, from emails to Twitter feed to dating sites to GPS phone tracking. The traces these activities leave behind have acquired the (misleading) title of “big data.” Within a few years, a standard part of graduate training in the social sciences will include a hefty dose of “using of big data,” and we will all be utilizing terms like API and Python.
This year ICOS, MIDAS, and ARC are again offering a one-week “big data summer camp” for doctoral students interested in organizational research, with a combination of detailed examples from researchers; hands-on instruction in Python, SQL, and APIs; and group work to apply these ideas to organizational questions.  Enrollment is free, but students must commit to attending all day for each day of camp, and be willing to work in interdisciplinary groups.

The dates of the camp are all day May 14th-18th.

https://ttc.iss.lsa.umich.edu/ttc/sessions/interdisciplinary-committee-on-organizational-studies-icos-big-data-summer-camp-3/ 

ITS offers training in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform

By | Educational, Events, General Interest, Happenings, News

Information and Technology Services (ITS) is pleased to announce training for Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. These day-long sessions will provide an overview as well as hands-on opportunities to explore these cloud based computing platforms. You will be able to get help with your specific use case, leveraging these platforms. Learn and apply knowledge to the work/research you are doing right now!

All scheduled dates will be held at the Campus Safety Services Building, 1239 Kipke Dr., Ann Arbor, MI with the exception of the May 9 Google Cloud Platform class, which will be held at Pierpont Commons, East Room. Registration required; seats are limited. Click on the class of your choice below to register (UMICH login required):

The training will range from beginner to more advanced throughout the day. If you have attended one of our past trainings for AWS, Azure, or GCP, we would like your input as we  work to finalize the agenda. Detailed agendas will be provided once finalized. To get started with these cloud services, or to get more information visit the service home page.

ITS offers AWS at U-M, Azure at U-M, and GCP at U-M to enable the U-M community to more easily consume public cloud computing services by working with these vendors to secure better terms and pricing only available to the University of Michigan. The ITS service also provides integration to campus resources and security, as well as consulting and training.

For Assistance or Questions

If you have questions about your service, please email ccs.support@umich.edu.

U-M launches Data Science Master’s Program

By | Educational, General Interest, Happenings, News

The University of Michigan’s new, interdisciplinary Data Science Master’s Program is taking applications for its first group of students. The program is aimed at teaching participants how to extract useful knowledge from massive datasets using computational and statistical techniques.

The program is a collaboration between the College of Engineering (EECS), the College of Literature Science and the Arts (Statistics), the School of Public Health (Biostatistics), the School of Information, and the Michigan Institute for Data Science.

“We are very excited to be offering this unique collaborative program, which brings together expertise from four key disciplines at the University in a curriculum that is at the forefront of data science,” said HV Jagadish, Bernard A. Galler Collegiate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, who chairs the program committee for the program.

“MIDAS was a catalyst in bringing  faculty from multiple disciplines together to work towards the development of this new degree program,”  he added.

MIDAS will provide students in this program with interdisciplinary collaborations, intellectual stimulation, exposure to a broad range of practice, networking opportunities, and space on Central Campus to meet for formal and informal gatherings.

For more information, see the program website at https://lsa.umich.edu/stats/masters_students/mastersprograms/data-science-masters-program.html, and the program guide (PDF) at https://lsa.umich.edu/content/dam/stats-assets/StatsPDF/MSDS-Program-Guide.pdf.

Applications are due March 15.

HPC training workshops begin Tuesday, Feb. 13

By | Educational, Events, General Interest, Happenings, HPC, News

series of training workshops in high performance computing will be held Feb. 12 through March 6, 2018, presented by CSCAR in conjunction with Advanced Research Computing – Technology Services (ARC-TS).

Introduction to the Linux command Line
This course will familiarize the student with the basics of accessing and interacting with Linux computers using the GNU/Linux operating system’s Bash shell, also known as the “command line.”
Location: East Hall, Room B254, 530 Church St.
Dates: (Please sign up for only one)
• Tuesday, Feb. 13, 1 – 4 p.m. (full descriptionregistration)
• Friday, Feb. 16, 9 a.m. – noon (full description | registration)

Introduction to the Flux cluster and batch computing
This workshop will provide a brief overview of the components of the Flux cluster, including the resource manager and scheduler, and will offer students hands-on experience.
Location: East Hall, Room B254, 530 Church St.
Dates: (Please sign up for only one)
• Monday, Feb. 19, 1 – 4 p.m. (full description | registration)
• Tuesday, March 6, 1 – 4 p.m. (full description | registration)

Advanced batch computing on the Flux cluster
This course will cover advanced areas of cluster computing on the Flux cluster, including common parallel programming models, dependent and array scheduling, and a brief introduction to scientific computing with Python, among other topics.
Location: East Hall, Room B250, 530 Church St.
Dates: (Please sign up for only one)
• Wednesday, Feb. 21, 1 – 5 p.m. (full description | registration)
• Friday, Feb. 23, 1 – 5 p.m. (full description | registration)

Hadoop and Spark workshop
Learn how to process large amounts (up to terabytes) of data using SQL and/or simple programming models available in Python, R, Scala, and Java.
Location: East Hall, Room B250, 530 Church St.
Dates: (Please sign up for only one)
• Thursday, Feb. 22, 1 – 5 p.m. (full description | registration)

Reading and discussion group:  Data science in understanding and addressing climate change 

By | Educational, Events, General Interest, Happenings

CSCAR announces a reading and discussion group Data science in understanding and addressing climate change that will meet on the third or fourth (depending on the preferences of participants) Friday of every month between 3 and 5 pm. We will discuss reports and significant papers that illuminate fundamental issues in climate change science, policy, and management. The suggested format at this stage is that we discuss one science and one policy (or management) paper or chapter. The focus will be on the spatial (and temporal) dimensions of the issue and we will concentrate more on methods and techniques keeping the requirement for domain knowledge relatively low. We will lay emphasis on the conceptual part of the tools and techniques so that it is accessible to a wider set of participants, but will also get into the technical details.

This is an effort to bring people involved in climate change together from a data science perspective. The idea is to learn together in a fun environment and foster dialogue with a focus on how data science can provide the common ground for mutual learning and understanding.

 We will meet in Rackham, but we will be open to rotating the location. You will be able to participate remotely, if you choose to.

 If you are interested send an email to Manish Verma at manishve@umich.edu

 If you have any suggestion for discussion and reading let us know.  We will include chapters from the IPCC and US global change science programs in our discussion.

CSCAR provides walk-in support for new Flux users

By | Data, Educational, Flux, General Interest, HPC, News

CSCAR now provides walk-in support during business hours for students, faculty, and staff seeking assistance in getting started with the Flux computing environment.  CSCAR consultants can walk a researcher through the steps of applying for a Flux account, installing and configuring a terminal client, connecting to Flux, basic SSH and Unix command line, and obtaining or accessing allocations.  

In addition to walk-in support, CSCAR has several staff consultants with expertise in advanced and high performance computing who can work with clients on a variety of topics such as installing, optimizing, and profiling code.  

Support via email is also provided via hpc-support@umich.edu.  

CSCAR is located in room 3550 of the Rackham Building (915 E. Washington St.). Walk-in hours are from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except for noon – 1 p.m. on Tuesdays.

See the CSCAR web site (cscar.research.umich.edu) for more information.

Info session: Consulting and computing resources for data science — Nov. 8

By | Data, Educational, Events, General Interest, Happenings, HPC

Advanced Research Computing at U-M (ARC) will host an information session for graduate students in all disciplines who are interested in new computing and data science resources and services available to U-M researchers.

Brief presentations from members of ARC Technology Services (ARC-TS) on computing infrastructure, and from Consulting for Statistics, Computing, and Analytics Research (CSCAR) on statistics, data science, and computing training and consulting will be followed by a Q&A session, and opportunities to interact individually with ARC and CSCAR staff.

ARC and CSCAR are interested in connecting with graduate students whose research would benefit from customized or innovative computational or analytic approaches, and can provide guidance for students aiming to do this. ARC and CSCAR are also interested in developing training and documentation materials for a diverse range of application areas, and would welcome input from student researchers on opportunities to tailor our training offerings to new areas.

Speakers:

  • Kerby Shedden, Director, CSCAR
  • Brock Palen, Director, ARC-TS

Date/Time/Location:

Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017, 2 – 4 p.m., West Conference Room, 4th Floor, Rackham Building (915 E. Washington St.)

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Real estate dataset available to researchers

By | Data, Data sets, Educational, General Interest, Happenings, News

The University of Michigan Library system and the Data Acquisition for Data Sciences program (DADS) of the U-M Data Science Initiative (DSI) have recently joined forces to license a major data resource capturing parcel-level information about the property market in the United States.  

The data were licensed from the Corelogic corporation, who have assimilated deed, tax and foreclosure information on nearly all properties in the entire US. Coverage dates vary by county, some county records go back fifty years. Coverage is more comprehensive from the 1990s to the present.

These data will support a variety of research efforts into regional economies, economic disparities, trends in land-use, housing market dynamics, and urban ecology, among many other areas.

The data are available on the Turbo Research Storage system for users of the U-M High Performance Computing infrastructure, and via the University of Michigan Library.

To access the data, researchers must first sign a MOU; contact Senior Associate Librarian Catherine Morse cmorse@umich.edu for more information, or visit https://www.lib.umich.edu/database/corelogic-parcel-level-real-estate-data.